


you live til you die

by Trojie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Suicidal Thoughts, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:53:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Turbines don't turn without power. Totems don't work if you're the one who's dreaming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you live til you die

**Author's Note:**

> Title from my Arthur/Eames anthem 'In the Fade' by Queens of the Stone Age. Beta-read by that pearl amongst fangirls and shining beacon of loveliness, signe_chan. 
> 
> Written for ko_no_yo's glorious art at the Inception Reverse Bang 2015. You gotta go see it, it sets the whole tone: [A change in the wind](http://oyonok.tumblr.com/post/131486018916/my-entry-for-the-inception-reverse-bang-larger)

The turbines have stopped turning. The wind still blows, and the yellow grass around them moves, ripples across the ground like an ocean wave, but the turbines are dead in the water.

The end of the world shouldn't be this filled with sunshine, Eames thinks morosely.

Walking between the steel columns of the turbines puts Eames in mind of that episode of Walking With Dinosaurs, the one with the _Diplodocus_ \- he feels like the little hatchling catching up with the herd, except those massive tree-trunk legs are frozen mid-stride, asteroid-struck. Cataclysm

But it wasn't the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Or the volcanic eruptions. Or the rise of flowering plants, or climate change, or egg-eating mammals, or any of the other things people tout as causes. (Eames once forged the Curator of Vertebrates at the British Museum of Natural History repeatedly over the course of six months. He does his research. He knows these things.)

What killed the dinosaurs was coincidence. It was all those things at once, in different doses, with the asteroid to deliver the _coup de grace_. And the rest of the planet rolled on. Things that could survive did survive. Things that couldn't, didn't. 

Just like the crocodiles and cockroaches, the birds and the bees, Eames is a survivor. 

And as the ridiculous pickup truck rumbles up next to him, he turns away from the graveyard of wind power, shoulders his assault rifle and hops in the tray at the back, because if he wants to keep being a survivor he needs to stop musing about palaeontology and instead, find some diesel for the generator. And some bloody toilet paper. They're out again. 

He bangs on the roof of the pickup to let Ariadne know he's in, and she starts off down the yellow, grassy hill towards what used to be a city.

***

'Ugh.' Eames spits furiously in the gutter to try and rid himself of the foul taste of fuel. 

Ariadne screws the cap back on the jerry-can. 'Y'know, I'm pretty sure there must be a way we can get into the actual pumps still. It's ridiculous to have to siphon a damn gas-tank every time we want diesel.'

'There are a lot more abandoned cars out here than fuel stations, and it's a lot _quicker_ to lever open a fuel cap and siphon someone's tank than it is to break into a pump that's electronically controlled when all the electricity is down,' Eames points out, licking the back of his teeth compulsively, shuddering. 'And anyway, it's done now, and we've got a shopping list of other things to get. Come on.'

' _You_ come on,' Ariadne mutters goodnaturedly, shoving the jerry-can into the cab of the pick-up and hopping back in - literally hopping, the thing's clearly built for macho bull-wrestling farmboys and there's no convenient little step for her to lever herself up into the driver's seat on. Eames resumes his seat in the back, watching in case they're followed. 

They pootle through the town, picking up the goods they need from shops half-ransacked already. Basics. Mostly the kind of shopping list he'd've had pre-apocalypse, but with less perishable goods. 

The fact that Ariadne pushes the trolley (yes, trolley, this might be the end of the world but it's still easier to cart things around in a wheeled contrivance than it is to carry them in your arms) with one hand and holds a pistol steadily in the other is neither here nor there. Neither is the fact that their 'shopping list' includes a few industrial sized bottles of bleach and other miscellaneous cleaning chemicals that, pre-apocalypse, Eames would never have dreamed of mixing. 

It's the new normal. And the fact that Eames is down five rounds of ammunition and there's a new set of scratches on the side of the pickup when they roll back to their hidey-hole doesn't even merit comment. 

'Any change?' Eames asks Yusuf, hauling bags of supplies into the kitchen. The chemist is leaning back in his chair at the dining table, squinting at a notebook like if he just crosses his eyes at the right moment the magic picture will spring into focus. It's a familiar pose. 

'Is there ever?' Yusuf asks gloomily. He closes the notebook. 'Did you get my things?'

Eames heaves the heaviest bag onto the tabletop, enjoying the theatrical thud it makes. 'It's a bloody good thing there's no such thing as an FBI watch list any more,' he points out. 'I'm not a chemist but I do know what some of these things do when you combine them, Yusuf. We're not actually planning on annexing a totalitarian dictatorship or something, are we?'

Yusuf looks at him flatly. 'Fences won't hold them forever, Eames. And even if Arthur is capable of 'one shot, one kill', which is terrifying, by the way, ammunition is precious. I can be a lot more than one kill if I have to be.'

Eames salutes sarcastically. 'Leaving aside for a moment that that last statement was a hell of a lot more disturbing than the sniper's credo, where is our delightfully repressed crack shot?'

'Where do you think?' Ariadne asks, swinging into the room with the last bag of food. 'Where he always is. Hey, Yusuf.'

'How was the trip?'

Ariadne shrugs. 'Arthur's not the only one with terrifying marksmanship,' she says, plopping into a seat next to him and pulling his notebook over. 'So here I am, still in one piece with a functioning truck that doesn't even need to be hosed down this time. Yay us.' She peers at Yusuf's chicken-scratch handwriting. 'Oh, hey, I was wondering about this,' she says. 'Are you sure about this timer design?'

Eames makes his escape before he can get drawn into the finer points of IED construction, and heads up the stairs to the first floor instead.

'Arthur?' You don't sneak up on Arthur. It's just foolish. And you certainly don't ever manage to do it more than once. So Eames, who, as aforementioned, is a survivor, chooses to always announce his presence in case Arthur didn't hear his footsteps on the the staircase.

'In here,' Arthur calls. 'Any luck?' He's in the master bedroom, as usual. It has good visibility out the bay windows. Cobb _was_ an architect, a million years ago, after all. Eames has to commend his choice of a warm, spacious, well-built and beautifully designed house to raise his children in, even if he can't praise most of the rest of the man's coping mechanisms.

'I thought you didn't believe in luck,' Eames says, pushing the door open. 'But plenty of toilet paper, which will substitute for now.'

'And that's why I don't need to believe in luck,' Arthur replies dryly, looking at him from the window, across the bed and its occupants.

'No change?' Eames asks, wishing he could pull Arthur away from that window. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like the way he stands there, looking out like he's sizing up the distance to the ground. 

Arthur shrugs. 'A coma is a coma.' And Limbo is Limbo, but neither of them need to say it. 

Cobb and his two kids are laid out on the master bed like bodies The youngest of them, the boy, is only thirteen, for God's sake. 

Eames wants to know what the hell possessed Cobb to take his children into the dreamscape with him. He wants to know why Cobb had them hooked up to a bloody PASIV when the power had been threatening to go out for days, with the chaos of the plague knocking out whole blocks, streets, of people at a time, and the political panic - in the middle of the sheer anarchy of a failing system, why would you pick Somnacin over a hurricane shelter or a well-stocked campervan or any of the other off-the-grid solutions other people tried? 

Not that any of them were going to work, but no-one knew that at the time.

Arthur runs a hand through his hair frustratedly, and keeps staring out the window, like he's awaiting a siege. 'You know what concerns me?'

'Global warming? Russian missile strikes? Charlton Athletic being under threat of relegation?' Eames walks across and tugs Arthur back, away from the glass, trying to get him moving. 'Come on, darling, you need to eat something.'

Arthur ignores him, even the "darling" that normally gets his goat a little, but does walk. 'The fact that all this seems perfectly normal.'

Eames says nothing. He's been having the same thought.

'You've checked, though.' It is a question. It isn't a question. Eames knows Arthur operates on an assumption that the world will be as he has predicted it will be. And in Eames's experience, he's on the money about 97% of the time. He'll have been rolling his die every morning, you could bet on it. And after he's rolled it, he comes in here. The highest point of the house. 

See, they're all flight risks. All of them. Teamwork doesn't come naturally to anyone whose living's been made in other people's heads. They came together when Arthur called, like this was one more job, but just like any other job, if it starts smelling like it's going south, they'll all make their own choices. 

And if _Arthur_ goes, Eames just has this feeling he's not going to run. Not if he decides that the way to get out is to jump.

Eames pulls Arthur out of the master bedroom onto the landing, and breathes a private sigh of relief as soon as the door closes on that window, shutting the possibility out, for now. 'I know it's not _my_ dream,' he says, shrugging. 'If I'm your projection of me, though, you're doing a damn good job. Tattoos and all. I suppose you probably have a file.'

'You have tattoos?' Arthur looks at him properly for the first time in this conversation. 'No, I don't have a file. And I don't _know_ if this is my dream. That's the problem with the totem system, isn't it. If you're the one that's dreaming, you'll never know it.'

'That's why I never bothered,' Eames says. 'All I need is a mirror.'

'And a razor blade?' Arthur quips.

'That file you say you don't have will tell you I left that particular charming habit in the dirt some fifteen years ago, thank you,' says Eames primly. 'No, Arthur, my sweet, all I need to know I'm not dreaming is the strange immutability of my own flesh.'

'And if you're not the dreamer?'

'I can forge in most dreams. Someone would have to put in specific effort to stop me. I'd have to be the mark, and I like to think I have my ear close enough to the ground to know if someone was on my trail.'

Arthur raises an eyebrow.

'And when you boil it right down,' Eames says, leaning on the balustrade over the landing, 'it's as simple as, if I can't forge, I don't put a gun to my head. If I can, then I know I have a way out.'

Arthur is watching him with a strange, intense expression. Eames doesn't believe in the soul, but he'd swear Arthur could at least see right down to his bones, looking at him like that. Arthur takes a step closer, and Eames's blood starts to heat. 'Are you telling me you don't have a way out?'

'Are you telling me you're dreaming?'

Arthur doesn't reply, but the last time someone looked at Eames like that, they had him up against a wall by the end of the night. 

Eames clears his throat. 'We should go down for dinner.'

***

That evening, there's a tread outside Eames's bedroom door, and he holds his breath, but there's no knock, no creak, no sliver of light. Just a footfall, a pause, and then the sound of someone padding away. 

Eames realises when his lungs protest that he's been holding his breath, waiting for a gunshot to round it all off. 

He doesn't sleep after that.

***

Breakfast is porridge, because oats come in easily-carried, easily-stored sacks. Eames pushes aside the memories of boarding school and reaches for the sugar, which also comes in sacks, and watches Ariadne pull tactics on Arthur.

'We need an extra pair of hands. Yusuf's busy.' And the Cobbs don't exactly need much looking after, Ariadne pointedly doesn't say, but Eames can read it in her face. 

Arthur downs his last spoonful of highly-nutritious, extremely dense wallpaper paste, and nods. 'Okay.'

And when they assemble in the downstairs hallway, ready to go, Eames has his assault rifle and Ariadne has her massive backpack of mysterious things, but Arthur has a map. 

'What?' he asks when Eames nods at it. 'I thought it would be nice if we knew where we were going. And I found it in my room.'

 _How convenient_ , Eames thinks, and he knows Arthur must be thinking it too - how convenient, how useful, how strange, that the thing you want you just happen to mysteriously find. And even though there's no reason the room Arthur's using, which was clearly being used as Cobb's study, shouldn't have had a map in it … well, it's still a coincidence. 

Yusuf materialises in the doorway from the kitchen holding today's shopping list, as written on a paper napkin. 'I strongly advise that you don't crash the truck while carrying all of the things on this list,' he says, fixing Ariadne with a basilisk eye. 

She cracks her knuckles. 'Just call me Dominic Toretto,' she says. Off Yusuf's unchanging and possibly permanent Dad Face (Eames is impressed) she adds, 'I haven't crashed it yet, have I?'

Arthur snags the list from Yusuf and scans it. 'Well, today would be a really bad day to start.'

***

Three hours later, they've cut through the chainlink and concertina-wire fence surrounding a major industrial chemicals storage warehouse and are loading up the bed of the pickup truck with a lot of things Eames is trying not to worry too much about. It's hot work, and he'd love to take his shirt off, but …

… but Arthur is watching him, has been watching him all morning. And Eames likes to have an ace, this time literally, up his sleeve. It tickles him just a little knowing for a fact that he knows something Arthur doesn't know. So he fetches and carries and endures the heat for the sake of smugness.

They work in a companionable silence, the three of them, which means that when the rattle of cut wires announces that they've got company, at least they get some warning. Three of the crazed remnants of California's populace charge through the hole they've put in the fence. For Eames, time slows. It's like hearing the rattle of stones before the avalanche. 

They're headed straight towards him.

Arthur drops one of them with two rounds to the head, quick as a snake, and Ariadne gets the second one. It - _he, he's a person, or was a person, or came from a person_ \- sprawls over the cracked concrete of the carpark. Two down is good, but Eames has his hands full with a sack of something labelled with 4s in three of the coloured diamonds on the label, which he knows enough to know is not something he wants to drop, and his rifle is inside the cab of the truck, and the third one is coming for him. 

The truck is ten paces away. The attacker (Eames is having trouble not calling them zombies and Reavers and Croats and every other thing that TV has ever called horror-movie monsters made out of people) is maybe seven paces away, on an intercept course.

Three more shots ring out. The fury-contorted face of the probably once perfectly nice middle-aged lady - she's even wearing pearls for God's sake - jerks, looks confused, hurt, and then sags as her body realises she's dead. And Eames is left with a faceful of spray. 

He wipes his eyes on his sleeve, once he puts the flammable, corrosive, reactive sack on the bed of the truck. Priorities. But his skin's still sticky, tacky, like blood always is, and he doesn't like how he can taste it. That's never good. Belatedly, he spits out what little moisture is in his mouth.

'We have established that this isn't catching, right?' he asks, when the other two catch up to him. He's mopped his face clean, but now his sleeves are all smeared with red. 'Yusuf did tests. I _remember_ him doing tests -'

Eames is aware that there's an edge of panic in the rising notes of his voice.

'He did tests,' Ariadne confirms, holstering her pistol. 

'And it wasn't catching.'

'Um.'

'It was, actually,' says Arthur, not holstering his weapon and not looking at Eames, either. 'What Yusuf couldn't figure out was why none of us had caught it yet.'

***

Here's one fundamental difference in a laundry list of differences between Arthur and Eames - Eames sits, but Arthur paces. He does it smoothly and slowly, moving between vantage points as if he's just casually checking sightlines, but still.

'You're pacing,' Eames points out. 'Arthur. For God's sake, sit down.'

Yusuf's kicked them both out of the kitchen where he's running what tests he can, because they were bickering. Eames feels like he has reason to bicker, what with the combination of potential ingestion of a terrifying pathogen, and Arthur being _Arthur_ at him. 

Arthur just glares. When he's angry, his face is practically Cubist, there are so many unnaturally straight lines. 'What do you want me to say, Eames?'

He's not planning, is the thing. Eames knows it. Arthur's not planning because he doesn't need to - he already did it. Contingency plans on contingency plans is Arthur's default strategy, and Arthur being Arthur, surely there must already have been one in there on what to do in the event that one of them was turned into a ravening zombie-analogue. So no, Arthur's not trying to work out _what_ to do, he's trying to work out when to do it. 

Eames clears his throat, but the words still come out scratchy when he asks, 'Well, do I die in your dreams?'

***

Their little impromptu houseshare has had a few complicated moments, including the debate over whether the toilet seat stays up or down (accompanied by the debate over whether or not the plumbing would still work despite all the utilities being non-functional), but at least food still happens. This is mostly thanks to Ariadne and her ability to problem-solve. Eames is used to fresh produce, Arthur "doesn't cook", and Yusuf has a strange inability to be good at combining flavours despite his background in chemistry, but Ariadne took one look at the issue of producing edible food out of apparently inedible tinned or dried components, and grinned the way she does when she's tipping a city on its head. Apparently it's a construction thing. 

Yusuf has declared that whether or not Eames is incubating the illness, he's not exhibiting symptoms. So in the absence of a better plan, they'd at least better feed him. This is not actually that comforting, and Eames can feel everyone's eyes on him. He keeps his head down and picks at his plate. 

Ariadne's attempt at shepherd's pie using only canned ingredients is excellent. Most of her food has been. Eames just isn't up to doing it justice. He'd swear he can still taste blood. 

He's vaguely wondering how much of a plate of food you have to eat before it's not rude to abandon it, when there's a creak from the staircase. Three weapons come out immediately - Eames isn't the only one of them on edge.

He's the only one who keeps his gun up, though. Arthur's goes back in its holster and he's around the table and halfway to the stairs in a shot. 'James?'

There's an almost inaudible ''es,' croaked out through a clearly very dry throat. 

'Hey, James, it's okay, it's me, Arthur. You remember me.'

Eames leaves his Browning on the table and slowly gets up. He doesn't want to startle the kid, but … 

Ariadne and Yusuf follow him. Ariadne catches his eye and raises an eyebrow. Eames shrugs. Yusuf shakes his head worriedly. 

Meanwhile Arthur is hugging the kid, James, which is startling enough as an action that Eames actually does pause when Arthur glares at him to stop moving. 'Come on, you need a drink of water,' Arthur says, and stands up, leading James to the kitchen. 

This conveniently takes them out of earshot. 

'He was in Limbo,' says Yusuf urgently. 'Without a PASIV to regulate his vitals. He could crash any time now.'

'He could snap any time now, too,' says Eames very quietly. 'God knows how long he thinks he was down there.' _God knows what he saw. God knows what woke him up._

'What the fuck are we going to do with a kid tagging along?' Ariadne asks, which is probably actually the most practical question. 'I mean, okay, actually, what were we even going to do anyway, but … this kinda means we need a real plan.'

'And another made-up bedroom,' says Eames. 'And probably another helping of that shepherd's pie. I can do the former if someone else wants to wield the ladle for the latter?' 

Yusuf volunteers to plate something up for the kid. Ariadne follows Eames up the stairs and helps him wrestle a slightly musty sheet onto the mattress in the last spare room they have. Given the blue decor and the frieze of trains, it's an odds-on bet that it might actually have been James's room in the first place. That might help. Or it might not.

'How do you feel about homeschooling?' Ariadne says, while they fight with the duvet cover. 

'What?'

'Well, look, apocalypse or no apocalypse, he can't just grow up like he was raised by wolves. Worst case scenario, Cobb never wakes up. Which leaves us with James.' She's a planner, Ariadne. Always, first and foremost, a planner, and where Arthur is depth-first, she's breadth-first. Arthur will know how to get you somewhere - Ariadne will know where you should go.

And she's right. Because either they can all go out in a blaze of glory, or they have to keep living. Eames, as aforementioned, would _always_ rather keep living. And while part of him would run, wants to run, where would he run to? You can't con mindless violent drones - you can't cheat an empty petrol tank. The odds would have been against him surviving solo. 

The odds are against him anyway. If he's infected with whatever the hell it is everyone out there has, if he's going to lose his mind like that, it's odds on that he's going to end up with a bullet's worth of kick and let's just hope that Arthur's paranoia is on-point. 

This isn't helpful thinking.

Eames bites his lip. 'Bagsy English Lit, then,' he says. 'You and Yusuf can arm-wrestle for who takes maths.'

 _Think only this of me_ intones Eames's last English master from before he'd left school, somewhere in the back of his head. _That there's some corner of a foreign field -_

Eames shivers.

***

It's somewhere around two in the morning (watches still work, at least until the batteries die), and Eames is starting to reluctantly think about going to bed, because it's that or pass out propped up against some item of furniture that'll give him backache. He's too old to pull an all-nighter even if the little threat monitor in the back of his mind is going haywire still. 

He really should learn to close the door before he starts to undress, though, even at two am. 

'Show me a tattoo,' says Arthur, leaning against Eames's doorframe in the kind of mildly-privacy-invading way you can only achieve when you've literally been in someone else's head. 

Eames pauses, his hand halfway to a shirt-button. 'Why?' he asks on autopilot. 

It's the wrong thing to say - Arthur immediately goes defensive.. 'Forget it.'

He starts to turn, as if he's going to walk away, and Eames abruptly doesn't want him to, doesn't want to just go to bed alone and waiting for a gunshot to come. So he turns properly and says, 'No, come on. Is this a reality thing?'

'Let's just say,' says Arthur, pausing, and then stepping into the room fully and closing the door behind him. 'I'd feel better about this whole situation if I could be surprised.'

Except Arthur never answered Eames's question, earlier. Which is enough of an answer in and of itself, really.

The candlelight in the room gives the whole situation an unreal feel, like Eames has stepped into an oil painting. _Determined Young Man with a Gun_ , it could be called - a portrait of Arthur in trousers with pockets down the thighs and one of those ridiculous high-performance-fabric shirts that nevertheless has its sleeves rolled up in that careful 'double the sleeve and then roll and make sure the cuffs protrude just exactly this distance' way, with the Glock in in his hand, and the whole ensemble lit gold. 

Eames pulls his own khaki shirt open just wide enough to expose a clavicle. 'This one was done in Mooloolaba,' he says. 'I think it's supposed to be a platypus.'

(It is a platypus. The platypus is a mammal, but it lays eggs, has a beak, is poisonous. It's neither fish, nor fowl, nor good red herring, and Eames doesn't remember when or where or who did it, but he knows exactly why he has it.)

Arthur comes closer, holstering the gun. 'Were you drunk?' he asks, inspecting the thing from a not-privacy-invading distance, but close enough that Eames feels oddly pinned into place. 

'No. The tattooist was. I … wasn't that bothered about drunk people putting needles in me at that point.'

Eames can tell Arthur wants to touch it, and is too polite to do it. Good instincts, Arthur has. Eames is considerably more bothered by people laying hands on without permission these days, compared to back then. 

'I think James has a message for us from Cobb,' Arthur says after another moment. He pulls back, and Eames lets his shirt settle back to covering his ink. He's always been careful to keep things to his torso and his arms, where shirts will cover them no matter what the weather. 'I'm just not sure what it is.'

'Or if it's going to help?'

Arthur makes a face. 'Cobb tends to follow the 'all guns blazing' school of tactics,' he says. 

'Whereas your philosophy has always been more 'don't be a hero'?'

'This isn't something that can be fixed, you know? If this is real, it means someone went and broke the system into pieces deliberately, someone smart and well-prepared and well-financed, and even if someone goes Die Hard 4.0 on their ass, it can't be fixed. It's too late. I'm worried that James is carrying something Dom knew, like who did this, and that that's why he put them all under, to protect some fucking useless secret that does no-one any good. It's incredible that James woke up, you know. There's no guarantee that Dom or Phillipa ever will. All for yet another fucking secret.'

Arthur sounds furious, but he looks calm. Eames doesn't have an answer. He was never good at false comfort, and Arthur isn't asking for it. Instead, he pulls his shirt off over his head, buttons be damned. 

'This is real,' he says, gesturing, arms wide. 'And you're right, about all of it. But we did get one miracle today, Arthur, at least, so maybe it's worth us praying for a couple more.'

'I don't believe in miracles,' says Arthur harshly. 

'Just like you don't believe in luck,' Eames shoots back, and kisses him. Because fuck it. Because he deserves either a famous last stand or a last night on earth and this is maybe all he will ever get of either. 

Arthur kisses hard, like he wants to know how hard he'd have to push to scare Eames off, but Eames just moulds himself to take it, until their hands are in each other's waistbands. Eames slides his hand down Arthur's arm, curls his fingers around Arthur's Glock and pulls it gently from his hand. 

'This isn't the kind of protection you need right now,' he murmurs, painfully aware of the giant, empty hollowness of this ancient house, and how it echoes, how sound travels even when doors are closed. 

'It's the only kind I've got,' Arthur mutters back, taking the gun once more. With a couple of clicks and a slide he takes it to pieces in his hands, drops them on the floor bit by bit, a rapid rattle like passing bells as they fall. The secondary-school English Lit symbolism of it floors Eames for a second, before he takes the opening it gives and pushes Arthur onto the bed. 

Eames has daydreamed, on and off for a few years now, about what it would be like to unbutton Arthur out of all of his designer outfits and see if his skin holds him in just as tightly as wool and silk do, or if maybe once you freed him he'd be something else underneath. 

Peeling him out of tac gear is something different than how Eames thought it would look, but he was right on the money - even bare of Kevlar and ripstop nylon, Arthur is nothing but barriers. 

'In my dreams you fuck me,' Arthur says, looking up at Eames with a dare in his eyes. He pulls at Eames's fly, starts to shove the trousers down off his arse. 

Eames kicks them the rest of the way off and then takes a chance, wraps his hands around Arthur's waist and rolls them over. 'Well, are you dreaming now?' he asks, again, one last time to pay for all.

Except he doesn't get the answer he's been angling for either way. 'Jury's out,' Arthur bites back, sliding down between Eames's thighs until he can settle his wayward fingers into place, kissing and sucking wet, stinging bites higher and higher up the muscle there until he's got his mouth on Eames's cock and his spit-stringy fingers halfway up Eames's arse.

'This is real, Arthur,' Eames says again, gritting his teeth to push back, not enough purchase on the sheets to get the leverage he wants. 'Feel that? Does this feel like a dream to you?' Arthur's forcing himself down on Eames's cock like he wants to choke on it, and he is, little gasps that make Eames jerk helplessly from suction and the touch of teeth. 

Arthur pushes himself down and down, swallowing helplessly, eyes screwed shut and spit dripping, and maybe it does. Feel real, that is. To Arthur. Maybe his dreams are harsh and frantic like this, maybe he comes like a gunshot, maybe he wakes up boneless, maybe he wakes up sore - maybe he wakes up _hard_ \- and Eames can't do this like this, all of a sudden; he eases his hands down to cradle Arthur's face, to call him off. If Arthur can't be trusted to know his limits Eames can know them for him. 

'Breathe, darling,' he advises, just to see Arthur frown with his beautiful sticky mouth pursed around Eames's cock, but he does back off. Eames doesn't let go, though. 

'That's it,' he says, slowly pumping his hips to slide the head of his cock deeper, gently, keeping himself from pushing too far. 'Just feel it. Since when did one of your dreams ever make this much mess?'

Arthur's still three fingers into Eames's body, and it's delicious. 'Can't be sure,' he grits out, and, oh Arthur.

'If this was a dream,' Eames growls, twisting in Arthur's capable, deadly hands, 'you'd be in me by now. I'd have remade myself, it's not flesh in a dream, you know that, it's shape, it's purpose, and I want you to fuck me, God, I want it, I want you in me -' It doesn't make sense and Eames knows he's babbling, trying desperately to fuck himself on Arthur's hand when Arthur won't let him, because Arthur knows exactly the tension he can put on the human body. On Eames's body.

A spatter of blood and Eames could be gone tomorrow, brain compromised but body still here. Eames has had more bodies than any person alive, maybe, but in the end this one will outlast him.

'Come on, Arthur, come on -' Eames pleads, begging to be fucked or to be believed, or both, or _something_ , anything.

Arthur's kneeling up, expression gone backwards from Cubist to Impressionist, from the intensity in angles of Braque to more of a Degas, warm light and deep shadow and blushing, perfect skin, as he pulls his fingers out of Eames's body and holds himself steady to push his cock in. 

It's too tight. It's wet and sloppy but it's too tight, and spit doesn't have the same slide as lube. It's so good Eames thinks he could die, desperately trying to will himself to let Arthur in.

Arthur swears the air blue, bites out the words like an old soldier, and keeps on. 

Eames's body is his totem. Always has been. What else would he ever need? But Arthur needs something more. Arthur needs proof of concept and Eames doesn't know how to give it to him. Eames wraps his legs around Arthur's hips and forces them together, eyes tearing up with the stretch of it, until he can bite at Arthur's neck hard enough to bruise, and then he rolls them over, a heave with his hips and his greater mass giving enough momentum to do it. The world goes raw and hot for a moment as Arthur's dick inside him hits home. The whole thing, the pain, the pleasure, the tackiness of skin, the scratch of sheets against the hair on Eames's shins, screams _reality_ to him so loud he can barely think. 

Fuck, he'd love to be able to forget, right now. He'd love to be able to fantasise. But there's blood in his mouth, he can still taste it. That's reality. 

And yet.

'Wake me up,' Arthur hisses through clenched teeth, eyes screwed shut. 'Fuck. Wake me up, wake me up -' as Eames rolls his hips, chasing the burn, making the most of distraction.

He leans forward, braces himself over Arthur on both arms, fucking himself down hungrily. 

'Wake me up,' Arthur pleads.

'You're awake,' Eames says, with some effort because Arthur's cock is grinding up inside him, right on the money and making his head spin. 'Arthur, you're awake, I keep telling you.'

'When we,' Arthur pants, and swallows hard. He bucks up and Eames gasps. 'In my dreams. We. I. I wake up,' he moans, planting his feet down hard and snatching at Eames hips, suddenly working in a rhythm fast enough to make Eames falter, so ready to come, yes, God, there, there, so good -

'We're not dreaming,' Eames growls, because he's too chafed and tight and sore, too bulky, too inflexible, too gun-calloused, for this to be anything but reality. 

'I wake up,' Arthur grits out, fucking him harder. Eames is going to come all over him in half a bloody second. 'When we -'

'Come on then,' Eames says, shoving himself down into Arthur like a starving man, starting to lose it, wrapping a hand around himself in vain to catch the mess, spilling all over Arthur's body. 'Do it, c'mon, oh, fuck, _Arthur -_ '

Arthur comes on a shocked, gunshot groan, pumping into Eames's fucked-open body for a long, long, time or so it seems to Eames's orgasm-ruined brain. They're a mess, slick sloppy and wet between them, everywhere their bodies touch, and the shine of it's like syrup in the light of the one guttering candle stub that's still valiantly burning. 

'In my dreams you kill me,' says Arthur softly into Eames's hairline. His voice is ruined. When Eames pushes up to look him in the eye, ruffled, he shrugs. 'It's what projections do.'

'Then you'd wake up,' Eames points out.

'Yes.'

Arthur's cock is still a heavy, throbbing thing in Eames's awareness, even softening and slick. He feels heavy, boneless with orgasm, trying to think and failing.

'You're still here,' Eames says eventually, muffled in Arthur's shoulder.

'You might still kill me.'

'Not like this.'

'Then I guess I'm awake.' Arthur's fingers trace the patterns of ink on Eames's shoulders, like he's learning them. 'If you ... I'll make it quick,' he says. It's a promise, said with the certainty of a man who can reassemble his weapon in under five seconds and also who thinks that a promise like that is a comfort.

Eames has to kiss him for that. 

***

'I think it makes sense, in a weird Freudian way,' says Ariadne as they up-end the precious metal drum (that they literally had to dig up out of a vault) into the reservoir. 'Zombie plague equals the id, the real world is the ego -'

'I'm sorry, but Somnacin is a very carefully designed hallucinogen-derivative,' says Yusuf, as the last dregs of this batch trickle into the water supply. 'It is not, in any way, shape, or form, the equivalent of the Freudian super-ego. And Freud was talking out his arse, anyway.'

'It's a coincidence,' says James, lying himself down flat on the truck bed and stretching. His growing pains are still giving him trouble. 'Somnacin interferes with the way we metabolise brain chemicals, that's all.'

'Thank you, professor,' says Yusuf, in an irritable tone but with a grin on his face. He and James have spent the last two weeks babbling at each other over increasingly more esoteric scribbles on the back of table napkins. Eames worries that they're going to go into business together and that the end result will be either cold fusion or the destruction of at least a moderately sized city.

Not that Eames cares. 'I'm just going to sit here and be happy that I'm going to live,' he says from the back of the truck, where he's perched, enjoying the sun.

Arthur, who's peering at his map, still trying to decide the most effective route in terms of diesel-conservation to their next water-spiking stop, smiles up at him. 

It's a hot day.

Eames pulls his shirt off over his head, and when Ariadne and Yusuf finally all get back in the truck and drive off, it waves in the breeze like a flag as they pass under the _Diplodocus_ graveyard of the turbines.

Running ahead of the truck are tiny bird shapes, pip-pip-pip calling in the sun-lengthening shadows of the golden grass. 

'Birds are dinosaurs, y'know,' says James, watching the quail. They gave up on the idea of homeschooling him pretty fast when it became clear he knew more than most of them about a lot of things. Cobb must have built a bloody library into his Limbo, is all Eames can think. James is an as-yet uncharted, apparently bottomless well of interesting information.

'I know,' says Eames. 'They survived the volcanoes and the flowers and the mammals and even the damn asteroid, and they're still here.'

Arthur folds up the map with a snap, kneels up and bangs on the roof of the cab. 'Left here,' he shouts down at Ariadne, who's driving as usual with the window down and her arm hanging out. When he settles again it's with his elbow snugged into the shallow hollow at Eames's waist, a subtle, skin-to-skin reality check. 'They're not the only ones,' he says.


End file.
